Precious
by LadyVaderWrites
Summary: On the battlefield, surrounded by the death toll of the war, Harry seems to be the only survivor. old fic repost: not DH compliant


Precious.

He wasn't sure how long he had lain there, felt the blood and life and will to live draining from him like the mud being washed now from his body by the sudden downpour. It hadn't been raining too long, that much he knew, because it had only just begun to quench the flames around them, to wash away the stench of blood and death, reducing the site of the Wizarding world's final stand against darkness to nothing more than a large muddy expanse of sodden grass and shattered bodies.

He'd watched Ron fall almost as the battle began, storming in shrieking and raging to the skies for his brothers, his sister, his father and mother, his fiancée… Hermione had fallen barely a month ago, left behind as a grisly message that Voldemort was coming, the curse that literally transformed her blood to thick gritty dirt evidence that the Dark Lord had evidently learned some nasty new tricks and was more than happy to show them off. At least they were together now, Ron hitting the ground still screaming bloody murder even as the Killing Curse struck the life from him, eyes turned skyward. He wished he'd had time to close them before the fires started.

He wished he felt worse, he felt awful, felt like every troubled, aching beat of his heart would shatter his body and leave his soul bare to the elements, nothing left of him but a pool of blood and a shadow that had once been a force of life, a thing worth saving, now colder than the bodies around him. He didn't feel bad enough, he needed to feel worse, so bad that the tears that refused to be shed would well up inside him and split his skull asunder. He wished he had strength enough to sit up just enough to fall back on the sword of Gryffindor, still sheathed and bloodless at his side.

Dumbledore had been next, the first to reach Voldemort, having promised the Order that his plan to face the Dark Lord head on had 'not' been nothing more than a way to distract him long enough for Harry to make his attack. None of them had been surprised the old man had lied to them yet again, it was, after all, something of a trademark for him but still, Harry found he wished he had not lived to see Dumbledore's fragile body drained dry, falling to ashes and floating on the breeze as the magical flames burned off his power like so much muggle petrol, Voldemort laughing and warming his hands over the flames of his former opponent.

Harry had watched each of them fall, Hagrid, Lupin, Snape, McGonagall, Tonks, Dean, Pomfrey, Seamus, Colin all racing into battle at Ron's heels, each outliving him by perhaps bare moments, the flurry of Killing Curses flung out by Bellatrix, Lucius and yes, even Pettigrew too much for even the bravest heart to conquer.

The worst, by far, had been Neville. Held before Voldemort, a prize, a hostage, a victim… his _friend_.

Fresh tears bloomed under closed, searing lids as Harry tried to turn his face yet further into the mud beneath him.

"_Do it Harry… Do It!_"

He hadn't hesitated, not even for a second. He'd ripped away the life of one of his closest friends without so much as a second thought and why? Because it _had_ to be done.

All those people, everyone he'd ever cared for, fought for, lay dead around him. He'd won. But at what cost?

He'd saved the muggles, the generations of halfbloods and muggle borns and purebloods of the wizards and witches yet to come but the world he knew was gone.

His friends, his family, his life was dead. Even his nemesis, now no more than a smouldering heap of ash himself, was gone.

The world no longer required Harry James Potter to save it. He was needed no more.

He pushed his fingers deep into the squelching dark mess of mud and gore around him, trying to lever himself upright. He was weak, so weak and tired but he thought that if he took it slowly, perhaps dragged himself or crawled maybe, then he might be able to reach that ledge. He'd stood upon it, only a few days ago, plotting the exact co-ordinates with Albus, trying to pin the location for a portkey, irritated when the old man was easily distracted by the beauty of the view. What good was a beautiful sunset over the sea if death waited, plotting, only a few miles away. It was dark now, he would be too late to fall into the sunset but perhaps Albus would allow him the beauty of moon rising over the ocean as a final resting-place.

His muscles trembled and protested as he pushed himself to his knees, eyes still shut against the carnage he already knew was there around him, focusing on breathing in and out, the acrid stench of burning flesh and vegetation filling his lungs as his head swam and reeled against the pull of gravity.

He'd known that achieving his animagus form would be strenuous, he'd known that the potion to alter the flames would cost him precious magic, time and energy, he'd known that his chances of surviving had been slim to none.

But he'd done it. Albus had been a smoking pile of silver gleaming ash, Riddle laughing, face distorted twice as much as usual by the pleasure he took in the murder of Harry's mentor, that twisted sick grin suddenly flying from his face as he caught sight of Harry.

In truth, it would have to be said that Severus Snape won the war against Voldemort. Having heard about the Nameless Dark Fire, a curse too awful to have ever been recorded or documented, that burned away the body's magic until the body itself combusted, he began instantly to try to invent a counteractive curse or potion. There was nothing that would prevent it, he found. But he also found that Dragons fire, if ignited with a fusion of the slightly less legal ingredients known to the wizarding world, would have almost the exact same effect if applied to Unicorns blood. So, in furthering his life by the murder of the beautiful creatures, Voldemort had actually delivered to them the means to destroy him.

Harry had taken Snape's genius potion almost the very second he'd portkeyed to the sidelines of the battle, the burning in his chest as the repulsive liquid slid down almost too painful to bear as he shifted and let himself morph into his animagus form.

His original form, it seemed, had been a Phoenix which Harry been pleased to discover, becoming significantly less happy that Voldemorts influence upon his powers had altered it to be a smaller but more vicious member of the basilisk family. With careful tuning and months of excruciating potions, spells and tests, they had (between the members of the order) managed to twist Harry's animagus structure till it was both Phoenix and Serpent - a great winged beast with teeth and tail, claws and scales, fire and venom.

But no matter how hard he cried during these trials, his tears would never heal. He had become nothing more than a weapon and with Snape's formula making his firebreathing so unstable it would be a gamble to see if it made it out of Harry before burning him to a crisp. The gamble, obviously, had paid off. Voldemort had not caught fire so to speak, as much as he had exploded. The price of draining a pure souls essence and magic was, it seemed, to lose his within the space of a heartbeat. His deatheaters had fallen, screaming, to the floor as he sucked power from them even as he crumbled into dust, draining their lives in some cases, some bursting into flame, some only losing their left arm to the twisted dark magic clawing for survival.

In the end, Voldemort had finally paid for his crimes, his followers laying dying and dead for their devotion to a madman, all that remained of this great battle between Good and Evil reduced to nothing more than smoke, charred flesh and ashes drifting on the wind.

Harry pulled himself to his feet, opening his eyes to gaze upon the battlefield, his last act of strength, he decided, to 'not' crawl or slide to his fate, but to walk, tall and proud and die with dignity as his friends, his 'family' had.

One awful, shaking step into the mud and blood became two, the dizzying wretched smell of death making him reel so badly he was forced to hold his breath for the next few trembling strides, breathing harshly through his teeth when forced to stop for air.

He closed his eyes, concentrating on the heave and rush of the waves somewhere before him, he knew they were there, he could 'almost' hear them, if he could just make it far enough they'd be in sight and from there…

"_Please…."_

He stilled, eyes opening and then closing quickly, ears straining past the waves and blood pounding in his ears, listening intently.

"Daddy… Daddy, please. Get up, we've got to go home…"

Harry opened his eyes.

The moon had risen and was now shining dully on the gleaming pools of blood and rainwater, the steady drizzle now almost obscuring the human wreckage from sight. Where was the voice coming from?

Slowly, because the effort made him yet dizzier, Harry turned away from his ledge and the dark depths he knew lay just below it, squinting through the downpour and seeing only the mass of crumpled bodies, charred and broken and _dead_ and… There.

A thin voice, weak with smoke and water and something so like pain it made Harry's bones ache all the more in sympathy, a live, 'living' person still here, still breathing amidst the dead.

"Daddy, please… come _on_, Father… please? Daddy?"

Something heaved in Harry's gut but all was gone, burned away, nothing left to retch on, nothing left at all.

Nothing… but Malfoy.

The moon picked out the silver glints in the water plummeting from the skies, bouncing its light back off the great wave of platinum hair laid out across the ground, pale skin shining also as the sneering face of Lucius Malfoy lay passive and cold, upturned towards the sky. He was dead. That much was clear to Harry, he could see the scorch marks all around him, a clear sign that Riddle had burned the magic, the life-force from him in a desperate attempt to save his own deformed, putrid skin, Malfoy's left arm even now, still smoking feebly in the rain.

Lucius Malfoy was dead… so why was his son trying to wake him up?

"Daddy… Daddy? Father? Please, come 'on'. We've got to go home… we have to find Mother…"

Harry's mouth twisted, turning his head to look back towards where the waves lay waiting for him. Draco would 'not' be finding his mother anytime soon. The order had found her, crucio'd to death still at the safe-house she'd fled to after refusing to let her son take the mark, a pointless gesture it seemed, as Lucius had simply taken his son by the portkey unknowingly worn about his neck in the protection chain his mother gave him. She'd died to save her son from joining the hordes of teenagers being bound to the Dark Lord, died thinking she had lost him but, going by Draco's anguished cries, it seemed perhaps his mother had bought him time enough to be overlooked, to live.

Harry sighed. Malfoy didn't need him, no one needed him anymore and he wasn't strong enough to help anyone even if he wanted to. The sea called his name and echoes of Ron's dying shouts filled his head. This world didn't need him, time to let go.

He cast a look back, just to look once upon a living thing amongst the horror all around, saw Lucius' head cradled in Draco's lap, his outflung arms and legs as though he'd simply toppled back and stayed there, most likely a far too quick a death for Harry's liking. But still…

As though it were yesterday, Harry watched his godfather tumbling helplessly through the veil, arms flung out as though to clutch back his balance, his life, gone so quickly, gone for good…

"_Daddy… please…_please get up…. I'm sorry, I love you…. I want to go _home_… I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"

Slow steps, sliding clumsily in bloodied mud and dirt and he was closer, close enough to call out, to just shout to him that his father was dead, to get up and go home himself…

Draco turned, flinching, eyes wide as he saw Harry, still silent, standing bathed in blood and moonlight. "Potter." He mouthed in shock.

"Malfoy." Was that his voice? That crack of ash and air?

Malfoy's mouth worked wordlessly, brain stumbling to keep up with the events around it, eyes blinking the smoke and rain away. "Potter," this time the word came out, clear and tremulous. "Potter, please help me? My… my father's hurt, he can't get up… I…"

"He's dead." Harry slowly took a few steps closer, pleased when he didn't slip before his former enemy, "Your fathers dead, Malfoy. Go home."

Draco blinked again. "I think he's unconscious. You have to help me."

Another step towards his schoolmate, one second further from the sea.

"No, Malfoy. I can't help you. He's dead."

A shudder ran visibly through the drenched blond's narrow form.

"No, Potter, no. You see, we have to go home… I can't lift him by myself. He needs help, Potter. Please?" The final word cracked, his voice shrill with strain and Harry could see the first edges of madness surrounding Malfoy's pale blue eyes, the white bright and wild as his fingers stroked through his fathers matted locks.

One step closer, close enough to see the water running down Draco's ashen face was more than rain, close enough to see that Lucius' eyes were wide with shock, face frozen now in perpetual surprise at having backed the losing side. Draco 'had' to know, he did know. He simply did not _believe_.

Harry's knees cracked and seemed to splinter as he let himself slide down to kneel beside the wide eyed, frantic boy letting his weary streaming eyes focus on the first real wizard he'd ever met. The white blond locks hung in tatty rats tails about his face and neck, water trickling from them steadily, further chilling the already bluing fair skin of his nape and skinny shoulders. Despite being dressed to perfection and treated to all the fine things and indulgences that the wizarding world had to offer, Draco Malfoy had never really blossomed, his frame stayed small and slight, his shoulders only spreading just far enough to shift him from androgyny into delicate, the only real sign of his being the Heir to the Malfoy line his thin lips and pointed chin that lent him a decidedly wicked air, a sharp agile look only belied by his constant air of spite and boredom.

His clothes were torn now, robes hanging ripped and gaping round his fragile body and Harry decided he looked perhaps more emaciated than he had during school, turning his eyes away before he had time to further analyse the fine white lines intersecting the bared skin of his upper spine, unwilling to see, to realise their meaning.

Here was the first wizard that Harry had ever known, the first to make him hate his name, his heritage, the first to make him think perhaps it was his fight, a battle worth winning if only to stop people like Malfoy, to save people from the likes of him and his father. It had never occurred to him that perhaps Malfoy had required saving himself.

With muscles that screamed with effort, fingers trembling and black with ash and smoke, Harry reached out to gently slide his hands, quaking with revulsion, beneath the soggy dead mane of Lucius Malfoy, easing the staring dead man's head from the lap of his devoted only son.

"You'll help me?" The words were thicker than before and it was with an odd relief that Harry tore his eyes away from the empty gaze now seemingly focused at him, watching as slight colour resurfaced in his former enemy's face, now blotchy as he fought back a great rush of tears, voice shaking with the question and eyes desperate on Harry's face.

Harry wasn't sure which gaze hurt more, the dead or the lost, but somehow with a vestige of calm he hadn't known he had, he laid Lucius' head down upon the muddy earth, ignoring Draco's wounded low cry as the blond locks turned brown as Harry pulled his wand and quietly spelled the dead eyes closed.

"Yes Draco." The words felt clearer, less painful, than they felt. "I'll help you."

Draco blinked, too long, just a beat too long, his shoulders slumping, hands shaking fitfully in his lap before he turned dim blue eyes back on Harry. "Th, thank you, Potter. I, I don't know any good healing charms… do you think we could, perhaps, levitate him, or just a basic healing charm, just to hold him till help gets here… or maybe we could…?"

"Draco."

The blond blinked again, focusing just below Harry's face, and the awful knowledge was there, just briefly as he grit his teeth around what sounded like a sob before carefully whispering, "Yes?"

"Your father is dead. As is your mother."

His eyes closed again, tight, so tight it screwed the fine skin of his up so tight it left stark white lines within his face as he quivered violently in response, fingers pushing deep into the mud on either side of him, holding him down, holding himself steady, just simply holding on with all he had.

"No." He said quietly, "Father and I we, we're going to go find Mother, I… we don't know where she is, she ran away and we have to find her to help her I, we have to find her."

"Your father knew where she was, Draco. He sent the DeathEaters who killed her, he ordered her death just as he ordered your kidnapping. She's dead Draco, she's been dead awhile now."

"No."

"Your Father is dead Draco, he died serving the madman who told your father to kill your mother, to make you serve him when you said No, he died because Voldemort sucked the life-force through him from the Mark, the mark you wouldn't take, the mark your mother died to save you from. She died to save you Draco, don't turn your back on that sacrifice. She gave her 'life' to save you, and your father is the one who took it."

"_No,_" his head was bowed now and Harry imagined the droplets rolling off that tiny nose were rather more painful to bear than rainwater, "_No… Daddy…_"

"He betrayed you Draco. He betrayed your mother. Cry for him if you must, mourn him if it brings you relief but he's 'dead' Draco. He's gone and so is she."

"_Mum._"

Harry stood, biting into his lower lip at the pain the action caused, heading spinning with the seductive noise of the waves crying his name, ready to turn his back, to walk away and welcome the cold, gentle clasp of oblivion.

"You asked for my help Malfoy, here it is. Get off this battlefield. Stand up and walk away. That's all that's left now. Don't stay here with 'him', I doubt he would have done the same for you."

He turned, took a step and every hair on his body seemed to stand on end at the heartrending sob that barely made it to his ears through the gentle wash over the rain over the land and the dead calling out to him.

"No… _no…_" Draco wept quietly, bringing sticklike arms up to wrap around his torso, a pathetic excuse for comfort, face dipping down to nearly rest against his knees, the cosseted boy breaking before him, crumbling even as Harry barely glanced back at him over his shoulder.

He lifted his foot, so ready, ready to take that step and keep on walking till he stepped out into the night and fell till there was nothing more, desperate to end this his non-life, his now pointless existence.

"_…But… who, who will take care of me?"_

And it was just that simple, Harry's spine straightening as he glanced back again, against his will, saw Draco curling into a ball at his fallen father's side.

_Who will take care of me?_

Harry turned and took a step, an easy stride and part fell, part sat back at his broken schoolmates side, his very last reserves of strength guttering out as he wrenched the muddy boy back up and away from that awful dead man's cold embrace, crushing him as tight as he could against his body.

"I will." He said fiercely, the words clearer than any spoken in as long as he could remember and he shook as Draco sobbed and clung to him, arms looping round his waist, a gentle, begging '_Please, please'_ muttered against his neck.

"I will." Harry said again and let his eyes fall finally shut against the rain, breathing in the smell of life within his arms, revelling in the steady heartbeat now pressed tight against him.

When the sun finally arose, touching cold bodies with fingers of light that could do nothing to warm or heal, the aurors, the last few not corrupted or hexed or killed during these final days, arrived quaking with horror at the sight before them. They spent hours combing through the wasteland, searching bodies of children and adults alike for just a glimmer of life, alternately gagging and fighting back tears as they catalogued the remains.

In the end it was Mad Eye who found them, banned from the fight after it became clear Voldemort could tap into his eye and see what he saw, he raced onto the field, stumbling through ashes and bodies in search of the only two life signs, the two magical blips on his radar. Mediwitches and wizards raced after him, heartened despite the odds as he screamed 'Potter, Potter!' as he clambered over the carnage.

They all drew to a halt when they found them, not so much 'two' as one within another, Draco so closely held in Harry's embrace he did not seem immediately apparent, only when quietly approached did it become clear, Draco's blond head tucked beneath Harry's chin, troubled and dark green eyes now closed, arms tight about his 'prisoner.'

Harry's limbs were so stiff from cold and overuse that they decided to not unbind him from the young Slytherin, levitating them instead to the nearest mediwitch station, an auror and a mediwitch moving to separate the two for treatment and further questioning.

The auror was petrified before they saw him move, Harry's wand then trained on the mediwizard before the ministry operative had hit the ground.

"Don't. Touch. Him." He growled as clearly as he could through his fire damaged voice-box, Draco whimpering and struggling to get closer to him, feeling the lack of one arm around him.

"B, but Mr Potter, sir, we need to separate you, to, to heal you sir? To treat you both?"

Harry lowered his arm, shivering as Draco pressed his chilled, pointed face into the hollow of his throat, murmuring desperately against him, fingers clinging, his relief palpable as Harry's arms tightened about him once more.

"Do it like this." He commanded, "He stays right here."

"But Mister Potter, the aurors will want him for questioning… to take him into custody…"

"NO!" Harry's loud response frightened them all, tears choking his throat at the pain the exclamation had caused, Draco straightening in his hold to squeeze him in such a way he wanted to cry, slender almost feminine white fingers moving to touch his face, push away the tears with an oddly careful touch, a gentle 'ssshing' noise uttered against his breastbone nearly his undoing.

"He stays with _me_." He said again, softly, daring the witch to object and glaring as fiercely as he could through his smoke blurred eyes when she bit her lip.

"Mister Potter, he's a ward of the ministry, they've given orders that he's to be detained and…"

The mediwitch stepped back, Harry's wand levelled at her once again.

"No," He said, what remained of his voice as cold as the melted remains of Wormtail's silver hand, "The ministry can't have him. He _needs_ me."

His arms tightened, harder than he meant and Draco tilted his face up, washed out blue eyes holding something so close to hope it made Harry's heart hurt just to look upon it. "He's mine now."

Fin.

ETA: h t t p : / / i 1 1 2 . p h o t o b u c k e t . c o m / a l b u m s / n 1 8 3 / l a d y v a d e r p i x / P r e c i o u s _ l a d y v a d e r _ w e b . j p g the link is to the AMAZING art for this fic, drawn by the FANTASTIC Red Rahl :D just take out the spaces


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